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The World Council of Churches (WCC) Permanent Committee on Consensus and Collaboration will meet from 25 February - 2 March at Kartause Ittingen, Switzerland. The committee will share its preparations for the WCC 11th Assembly to be held in Karlsruhe, Germany in September 2021. The group will also make decisions regarding a report to the assembly.

A special working group of the World Council of Churches Commission on World Mission and Evangelism met in Istanbul, Turkey this week to further explore the place and profile of transforming discipleship in the life and work of churches globally. During the meeting the group on “Transforming Discipleship” worked on a document drafting that could best depict the shape of discipleship in the light of the Arusha Call.

Beate Fagerli, World Council of Churches (WCC) assembly coordinator, answers the most frequently asked questions about the upcoming WCC 11th Assembly in 2021.

The WCC has welcomed four new programme executives.

The annual meeting of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) was hosted by the WCC at the Ecumenical Centre, Geneva, and at the nearby Chateau de Bossey from 6-7 February.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) was nominated as a top non-governmental organization and received a 4th place in the Geneva Engage Award on 29 January. The honor recognises the actors in International Geneva for their social media outreach and online engagement.

In a speech before the annual assembly of the Protestant Federation of France, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit reflected on the questions: Where does the ecumenical movement stand today and where should the WCC take in it in the future?

In a reflection in the Ecumenical Centre Chapel in Geneva on 20 January, WCC programme executive for the Faith and Order Commission Dr Ani Ghazaryan Drissi offered a reflection on how important it is that, in difficult times, churches welcome people who have no place to go.

Jürgen Moltmann looked astonished when he saw his name on the list of contributors. In a recent dinner at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, my colleague Stephen Brown, the editor of The Ecumenical Review, surprised him with a 50-year old brochure.

Retired Bishop Gunnar Stålsett was convicted by an Oslo court as on 19 December, for having offered work and income to a rejected refugee who couldn’t be sent back to Eritrea. That became illegal in 2011, but Stålsett described himself as a conscientious objector to a law he views as simply wrong. Bishop Stålsett’s case attracted more media coverage in Norway and worldwide, after he was convicted of violating immigration law.

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, met with the general of The Salvation Army, Brian Peddle, at The Salvation Army International Headquarters in London. The two leaders focused on the relationship between The Salvation Army and the WCC, and on the upcoming 11th WCC Assembly to be held in 2021 in Karlsruhe, Germany.

In a lecture at the Institute for Ecumenical Studies at St Thomas Aquinas Pontifical University (Angelicum) on 13 December, World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit offered a lecture entitled "Ut Unum Sint: Between Winter and Spring, Reality and Prophecy, 1995 – 2020.”

At an ecumenical conference on 10 December in Stuttgart, Germany, commemorating 50 years of combatting racism, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit offered reflections on mission and on combatting racism. He also met with Bishop Frank Otfried July from the Evangelische Landeskirche in Wuerttemberg.

As he shared the perspective of an indigenous person at a side event during the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Madrid, Rev. Glen Chebon Kernell, urged people to adopt a deep respect for Mother Earth.

An 84-year-old former bishop of Oslo, Gunnar Stålsett, was ordered to appear in court because he illegally employed a woman from Eritrea who’d been denied asylum and wound up as an undocumented and rejected refugee.

“Nationalist power politics is no longer interested in truth. They wage war under the guise of peace, a hybrid form of war with economic sanctions and cyber wars, fake news and lies,” affirmed Prof. Dr Jürgen Moltmann at the opening of his public lecture at the headquarters of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, 2 December.

His Holiness Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, visited Geneva on 12-13 October. Karekin II, a World Council of Churches (WCC) president, was attending the 2019 Swiss Red Cross Ball with the theme of “Brighten the Lives of our Elders.” The main purpose of the event was to support people with disabilities in Armenia.

As the Finnish Mission Council celebrated its centenary on 12 October in Tampere, Finland, the Lutheran Archbishop of Finland, Dr Tapio Luoma, celebrated the witness in mission of the earlier missionaries and generations. Luoma also urged every generation to find answers to the question of how to live fully as a disciple of Jesus and fulfil his commission.

As the Finnish Mission Council observed its centenary, Dr Risto Jukko, director of the World Council of Churches Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, spoke about the relation between Finnish mission work and the international mission movement.